


In the Wake of the Second Horseman

by EldritchMage



Category: Bard/Thranduil - Fandom, Barduil - Fandom, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, Thranduil/Bard - Fandom
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Implied Warfare/Violence, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 03:18:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14275797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EldritchMage/pseuds/EldritchMage
Summary: When addiction threatens to consume Thran, his lover Bard is desperate to help - but Thran isn't. Yet in ending his relationship with Bard, Thran savages both of them, not just himself. Four years later, Thran's about to discover what remains from his cruelty.What he finds is a surprise - and humbling.





	In the Wake of the Second Horseman

I had to dash back from the mailbox because the light drizzle that’d fallen all morning suddenly turned into a downpour. Still, no matter how wet I was, I paused when I reached the front door. Bard had emerged from a long morning of photo editing, and was in the kitchen making us tea. I wouldn’t burst in with a racket that would startle him.

What a change that was.

Four years ago, when nothing was more important than me, myself, and I, I would’ve made any amount of racket to get inside before the rain sullied my long blond mane. Such vanity – I’d been ill then, craving nirvana in my veins more than food in my stomach. Starving was as critical to my vanity as my hair – a skeletal body paired with ashen skin and hair was cool, sexy, heroin chic at its finest. It hadn’t been until my hair had started falling out in clumps that I realized the insanity of the illness that drove me, and committed to getting better.

How shallow was that? I’d lost Bard, the love of my life, weeks before my hair had started to fall out, and I hadn’t batted an eye. Why had it had been vanity that had led me to sanity, rather than the loss of my lover?

Losing my lover – that was a lie.

I hadn’t lost Bard. I’d driven him out. Discarded him easier than a used tissue.

Despite my illness, Bard had loved me body and soul. We’d been accidental roommates in art school, then passionate lovers. But when academic pressure had become too much for me, heroin had taken off the edge. Bard had been horrified, but no matter how deeply I’d fallen, he’d cared for me when I couldn’t or wouldn’t. In return, I’d sucked up his unstinting love as if he owed it to me, demanding more and more and more until he’d cracked from the strain.

“I can’t bear to watch you kill yourself,” he’d begged. “You need more than I can give you. Please, please, Thran, let me help you get the treatment you need.”

That’s when I’d thrown him out.

His last words had not been the angry ones I’d deserved.

 _I love you_ , he’d said.

Then he’d gone.

After my outrage at his abandonment had died, I’d thought about him every day.

No, that was another lie – two, in fact.

Back then, I’d been so good at lying to myself.

Bard hadn’t abandoned me – my self-destructiveness had driven him away. And I hadn’t merely thought of him – I’d missed him.

Terribly.

Self-hatred had been the core of my life, but as I’d realized what I’d done to him, I’d hated myself even more.

In shame, I’d overdosed.

Someone had found me in time, which I’d rewarded with fury. How dare anyone thwart my attempt to self-annihilate?

Another lie.

I’d gone to hospital, then another hospital, then therapy, then no end of other things. Slowly, reluctantly at first, then with more humility, I’d worked through my shitty, entitled attitude. After a year, I’d returned to the world beyond hospitals and therapists’ offices. I’d stayed clean. I’d no longer looked like a skeleton. I’d gotten a job. I’d rented a house. I’d even tried another relationship to prove to myself that I was cured.

I’d come so far, but not far enough to stop lying.

Why had I thought I could have a relationship? After I’d disposed of Bard, I no longer had the means to love anyone.

I’d found the courage to apologize to my new lover-not lover, and the kindness to end a relationship that only he’d been fit to create, much less sustain.

Three solitary years had passed.

Then...

I walked into a coffee shop, only to find myself face to face with Bard.

By the time I registered that it was he, there was nowhere to run. Before I could stop myself, I met his warm brown eyes that had once shone with love. What would I see now? Hatred? Disgust? Anger?

Instantly, his eyes warmed as they always had, which I didn’t deserve. But in that unguarded moment, warmth wasn’t all I saw.

Kindness, yes. Compassion, yes.

But also grief, suffering, mortality, as if he only went through the motions of his life.

He was broken.

Oh, gods, what had happened? Had I -

He asked how I was.

I told him the truth, that I’d been in recovery for three years, that I got stronger every day. His relief was genuine, elated – he was proud of me! He savored my success as an artist and designer, as if it were important to him.

He said nothing of himself.

When I pressed, he said he’d become a photojournalist.

Of course he had – even in school, when his skill was raw and unpolished, he’d known how to make each photograph an evocative story, no matter how ridiculous the class assignment. Even during our last summer together, as I’d accelerated my downward spiral, in and around tending me, he’d taken refuge in his camera, honing his skills with each click of the shutter...

I’d resented that part of his life hadn’t revolved around me. So when he’d begged me to help myself, I’d pitched him out.

When the enormity of what I’d done had sunk in, I’d fallen apart. Not Bard. He’d finished his degree, which revealed his strength. Then he’d taken a job with an international aid foundation, using his photographs to chronicle world conflicts, and thereby incite people to stop them, which revealed his courage...

Not just courage.

For three years, Bard had been a nomad, owning only his camera and a backpack as he'd witnessed the horrors and hardships of uncounted refugee camps and war zones.

 When I asked him why, he said he’d felt at home there.

When I asked him why again, he said he’d been as much of a refugee as anyone living under patched canvas in the middle of a minefield.

I couldn’t swallow the lump that clogged my throat. I’d viciously torn Bard’s heart from him, and he’d shrouded his grief with his images of the world’s horrors.

There was no lie I could tell myself that absolved me from what I’d done.

“I was cruel. Selfish. I hurt you for loving me, when I should’ve treasured you. I’m sorry.” I stared at my feet. “Gods, I won’t ever be able to say how sorry I am. You deserved better. So much better.”

He tipped my chin up until I met his eyes.

“I still love you, you know.” He smiled, and gently tugged a strand of my hair in that familiar, tender gesture I’d never expected to feel again, offering solace, forgiveness, compassion that I didn’t deserve. “I always will.”

His touch on my hair lingered, then he walked out of the coffee shop.

Oh, gods – everything was still inside him, despite the damage I’d done, despite enduring three years of unspeakable carnage. But he didn’t love alone – I still loved him, too, with an intensity that I’d never felt before and never will again.

Before the door closed, I ran after him, and if anyone stared at two men embracing as if they’d just thrown each other a lifeline, neither of us cared.

I begged him to come home with me.

Gently, he told me about his PTSD.

He didn’t have to tell me – I saw it in every breath he took. I reminded him that my addiction hadn’t scared him, so his shadows wouldn’t scare me, either. I’d take all he’d taught me about love, and care for him as he’d cared for me.

He stayed the night.

By morning, neither of us could bear for him to leave. So we settled together as we should have long ago.

The first three days were bliss as we rediscovered our old, easy rhythms of cooking, of cuddling, of just breathing together. Both of us felt more at peace than we had in four years.

The first nightmare came in the depths of the fourth night.

Bard said it was the same one he’d had for six months, where he couldn’t stop taking photographs of the worst war carnage anyone could imagine. Even when tears blinded him to the searing images framed in the lens of his camera, he couldn’t stop. He woke gasping for breath, soaked in sweat, tormented by all he’d seen.

I comforted, soothed, and reassured, just as he’d comforted, soothed, and reassured me so many times.

After he fell back asleep, I couldn’t. So I looked at his photographs posted online. Some had won awards, but his skill was evident in every image. I saw for myself the horrors he’d seen, what he’d immortalized – no, burned – into the brain of anyone who saw his work. Yes, many showed more than blood and carnage, but even those were melancholy, replete with grief and loss rather than redemption.

I couldn’t imagine how he’d endured those horrific moments, much less photographed them.

“Just shadows,” he’d tell me, each time he had that dream, as if I were the one who needed comforting. “Just shadows.”

In the light, Bard was better, though he startled easily. That could cause unnerving flashbacks, hence my care not to run into the house from the mailbox pell mell. But now that he wasn’t a nomad, he went to therapy regularly. He was still the thoughtful, loving man I loved, and he was determined to focus on our new life together.

I was determined to be worthy of him. The only thing I asked was that he never go into another war zone. We were both relieved when he agreed.

He told me about Shikoku, an ancient Japanese island where pilgrims walked a 750-mile circuit connecting 88 temples. He’d journeyed there twice before to photograph the paths and temples. Another trip was in the works to capture the temples he hadn’t yet photographed, and a book would soon follow. This was the perfect hopeful project for him, and he was excited to pursue it.

His nightmares came less frequently, but they still plagued him every few days.

As I came in out of the rain, I took care that the screen door didn’t slam after me. Even so, Bard warily stuck his head out of the kitchen as I came inside. “Thran?”

“Just me, babe, bringing in the mail. You get the prize today. There are two packages for you.”

“Yeah?” Bard looked intrigued as I laid my haul down on the kitchen table. “I’ve got tea ready, love. Pour yourself a cup while I see what’s in the packages.”

I did, keeping one eye on Bard as he picked up the first package. His face cleared in recognition.

“Something good?”

“The publisher sent a copy of my book.” He looked up with a crooked smile. “Hot off the press.”

I bit my lip as he opened the package to reveal an oversized volume cocooned in plastic shrink wrap.

 _The Second Horseman_ , the cover read.

I wasn’t up on Biblical Revelations, but Bard’s work told me all I needed to decipher the meaning of the name.

The second horseman was War.

I was relieved when Bard laid the book on the table, unopened. He’d taken all the photographs, so he didn’t need to see them again. I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to see them again, or if I wanted to see them myself. But I’d read the pre-release reviews of the book online, and by all accounts it was stunning. Even if I didn’t want to see the pictures, I did want to read the text. Bard had written it, and maybe reading his thoughts about what he’d seen would show me more ways to support him.

I didn’t need to read anything to know why he’d willingly witnessed those horrors.

I’d tried to kill myself through nirvana in a needle, and he’d tried by act of war.

My act had been one of fear. So, so many kinds of fear, all of them self-inflicted.

Bard’s act had been one of grief, grief I’d inflicted on him.

What had I ever done to deserve his unflinching love, much less his forgiveness?

Bard had taken up the second package. This one he opened with more eagerness, smiling when he pulled out a small paperback volume and held it up to me.

“What’s that one?”

“This,” he said with a pleased smile, “is therapy.”

I scanned the cover. “ _Lucid Dreaming_?”

“It’s a technique Buddhist monks pioneered to learn how to be aware when you dream.”

I didn’t know what to make of that.

“I’m going to have those dreams for a while. So this will help me figure out how to get inside them so I can make them stop.”

My eyes widened. “Really? People can do that?”

“They can.”

“So... maybe you can, too?”

“I hope so,” Bard nodded. “My therapist thought it might speak to my Buddhist bent, as he calls it. I’m excited to give it a go.”

“What an awesome idea!” I slipped my arm around Bard’s waist to hug him close. “I didn’t know that was possible. I’m excited, too.”

“It makes sense,” Bard smiled, kissing my hair gently. “Why not use my dreams to help me defuse them? I have everything to live for, every reason to be happy. The sooner I come out of the shadows, the better.”

The look Bard gave me was settled, happy, at peace. Determined. That’s when I knew those dreams didn’t stand a chance.

I knew something else, too.

This time, I’d treasure Bard as he did me.

Without reservation.

 

# # #


End file.
